Scientists have discovered why Alzheimer’s is so difficult to treat

Scientists understand why Alzheimer’s is so difficult to treat — until now it was done incorrectly

Though creating effective cure of Alzheimer’s disease is not yet possible, according to us researchers, progress can be made, if to cease to perceive it as a single disease, says Novin Dim.

To such conclusion scientists led the study, which was attended by 4050 people with late stage Alzheimer’s disease. The average age of participants was 80 years, and women were more than half (61%), reports Science Daily.

Cognitive abilities were assessed each on four scales: memory, Executive functioning, speech and visual-spatial functioning. The analysis allowed to divide all patients into six groups.

From the largest of them, which included 39% of the subjects, scores on all scales was about the same. The second group, which included 27% of participants, was considered more low in comparison with other categories of memory assessment. Another three groups were awarded the minimum rating in the categories of “speech,” “visual function” and “Executive functioning”, and one group was allocated low scores on the two scales.

Comparing the data of psychological testing with genetic characteristics of patients, the researchers identified 33 single nucleotide polymorphism associated with a specific cognitive impairment.

Their influence was higher than that of 20 polymorphisms detected in a larger study based on the concept of Alzheimer’s disease as a single disease. In particular, one of variants of the gene APOE is much more common in patients with memory impairment.

Scientists argue that, like breast cancer, different variants of Alzheimer’s disease should be considered and studied separately. These features should be considered when testing new drugs. Otherwise, even effective for some groups the drug will fail in clinical trials.

We will remind, epidemic of dementia affects scope: affects people around the world

As reported Politeka, senile dementia: alarming signals that should worry